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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
We will examine texts and films about Berlin as a center of cultural and social transformations in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special emphasis on the post-wall period. We will move from the turn of the century (when the city's population had recently tripled in size) to the establishing of Berlin as a world capital in the 1920s, then through Nazi-era transformations, wartime destruction and the cold war division of the city. We will conclude with the reshaping of the city after the fall of the Berlin wall. Texts and films may include: Walter Benjamin, Berliner Kindheit um 1900, excerpts from Ulrich van der Heyden und Joachim Zeller's Kolonialmetropole Berlin, Walter Ruttmann, Sinfonie einer Gro?stadt, Irmgard Keun's Das kunstseidene Madchen, Nazi architect Albert Speer's plans for Berlin as the fascist capital "Germania," the 1956 East German youth protest film Ecke Schonhauser, short fiction by Reiner Kunze, Aras Oren, Peter Schneider, Bodo Morshauser, Irina Liebmann. Recent films to be included are: Sonnenallee, Goodbye, Lenin!, Berlin is in Germany, Geschwister.
Prerequisite:
German 201 or equivalent
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3.00 Credits
"When we are missing ourselves, we are missing everything." So spoke young Werther in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's groundbreaking novel from 1774. The Sorrows of Young Werther exploded into high Enlightenment Germany, with its emphasis on rationality, on universal human values and on optimism about the future, a bestseller that instead exposed the volatile inner world of an extraordinary individual. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Germany and Austria, profound interiority surfaced frequently to challenge--and even threaten--what was touted as the triumph of objective, scientific thought. At the same time, the writers and thinkers who explored the deepest recesses of the mind were beset by alienation and despair as they were drawn into inevitable conflict with dominant paradigms. This course will examine literature and thought at the moments when the tectonic plates of reason and supposed unreason converge and collide most forcefully: around 1800 (Goethe, Kleist, and the Romantics), around 1900 (Nietzsche, Freud, Kafka, Hofmannsthal), the mid-twentieth century with its disastrous consequences (Hitler, Boll, Bachmann) and the end of the millennium (Roth, Jelinek). Some theoretical work (psychoanalytic theory, Adorno, Benjamin) will aid in the process of understanding the literature and philosophy we read. All readings and discussion will be in English translation.
Prerequisite:
One college-level literature course
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3.00 Credits
This course combines a survey of German film history and an introduction to visual literacy. Students will learn how to critically examine films as aesthetic media and cultural artifacts, and will explore texts and films that demonstrate and challenge the idea of a national cinema. The films we will watch include those by directors such as Rye, Wegener, Lubitsch, Wiene, Murnau, Reiniger, Sternberg, Lang, Dudow and Brecht, Siodmak, Sierck, von Baky, Riefenstahl, Staudte, Wolf, Carow, Maetzig, Reinl, Kluge, Fassbinder, Herzog, Schlondorff, von Trotta, Farocki, Wenders, Sanders-Brahms, Buttgereit, Schlingensief, Ottinger, Tykwer, Akin, Petzold, Weingartner, Edel, Aladag, Samdereli, and others.
Prerequisite:
GERM 201 or the equivalent
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3.00 Credits
German chancellor Angela Merkel controversially claimed in 2010: "Multikulti ist gescheitert." (Multiculturalism has failed in Germany). We will investigate different perspectives on Germany's integration of minorities. In the 1960s, government labor contracts brought large numbers of foreign workers into the country and facilitated the "economic miracle." How did the newcomers adapt to life in Germany and what did they hold on to from their home cultures? How did subsequent generations experience life in Germany? What were the major political shifts that took place regarding citizenship and participation in the public sphere? How do popular media portray minorities? How do members of minority groups portray themselves? We will read texts by: Zafer Senocak, Hatice Akyun, Yoko Tawada, Marica Bodrozic, Navid Kermani, Wladimir Kaminer, view feature films and documentaries, and discuss a wide range of social commentary and analyses across the political spectrum from right wing populists to left liberals: Thilo Sarrazin, Kirsten Heisig, Astrid Geisler and Christoph Schultheis, Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Alexander Hausler, Freya Klier, Mark Terkessidids, Rita Sussmuth and others.
Prerequisite:
GERM 202 or equivalent
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3.00 Credits
German senior thesis.
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3.00 Credits
German senior thesis.
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3.00 Credits
German independent study.
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3.00 Credits
German independent study.
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3.00 Credits
German 111-112 is for students whose principal reason for acquiring German is to work with written materials. It is particularly appropriate for students majoring in fields in which the ability to read primary and secondary texts in German can be crucial, such as Art History, Classics, Comparative Literature, History, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, and Theatre. In the first semester students learn the elements of grammar and acquire a core vocabulary. In the second semester, while covering advanced grammatical topics, they practice reading in a variety of textual genres in the humanities and social sciences. They also learn how to work with dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works, in both printed and online forms. By the end of the course they will have a solid foundation for building proficiency in German, whether through self-study or further course work.
Prerequisite:
Students who have taken or plan to take 101 and/or 102 may not take 111-112
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3.00 Credits
German 111-112 is for students whose principal reason for acquiring German is to work with written materials. It is particularly appropriate for students majoring in fields in which the ability to read primary and secondary texts in German can be crucial, such as Art History, Classics, Comparative Literature, History, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, and Theatre. In the first semester students learn the elements of grammar and acquire a core vocabulary. In the second semester, while covering advanced grammatical topics, they practice reading in a variety of textual genres in the humanities and social sciences. They also learn how to work with dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works, in both printed and online forms. By the end of the course they will have a solid foundation for building proficiency in German, whether through self-study or further course work.
Prerequisite:
German 111/511 or permission of instructor; students who have taken or plan to take 101 and/or 102 may not take 111-112
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